The Prince of Persia remake's graphics were its developers' choice

While yesterday’s announcement of the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was met with enthusiasm by long-term fans of the series, some people were unimpressed by the visuals of the updated take on the game. In an interview with The Mako Reactor, however, game director Pierre Sylvain-Gires suggested that the approach to the game’s visuals was a conscious choice by the teams behind it.

Sylvain-Gires acknowledged that the 17-year-old original had “definite room for improvement” when it came to graphics, but the teams at Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai “really wanted to give a unique look to the game” that matched its fantastical elements.

Because of that, the studios “decided to go for a unique visual treatment to make this game stand out from other games.” Capturing the Prince’s movement was different from the process used to make the Assassin’s Creed games, so Sylvain-Gires suggested that difference should extend to the visuals. “It’s not another Assassin’s Creed, it’s not like the same Prince of Persia from 2008. It has to be unique.” The attempt to capture the fantasy element “is shown through the saturation, through the light”.

It appears that the visual style was entirely the studios’ choice - when pressed on whether the teams had had feedback from Ubisoft executives or been constrained by time or budget, Sylvain-Gires said that the process had been “completely led by Ubisoft Pune and Mumbai,” and that “it was not a problem of timeline or budget”. The remake has been in development for more than two years, and had a peak of 170 developers working on it, on top of the investment that Ubisoft has put into its broader studio infrastructure over the past few years.

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